500 words a day

Five hundred words. Five hundred steps. Five hundred pounds. Five hundred books.  This is how we measure things in life. Five hundred television channels and nothing to watch.  Five hundred hours that I will never get back. I’ve measured out my life in coffee spoons – thanks Prufrock. Fifty years ago it was a dashing young man who stole my heart and broke me forever. Kevin took my breath away the first time I met him in the Brahma Room at St Bernard College. I had gone in with my then-roommate Janice as we felt our way around the new experience of college life.  He came over and introduced himself and I always suspected he was after blonde Janice but I was smitten and somewhat tongue-tied.  A brief flirtation followed and my heart sank every time he seemed to land on someone else’s arm. For me there was intense chemistry that is strong today and never duplicated in my complicated life since then.  Spring that first year was glorious. I had moved on from Kev...

I’ve spent the better part of the last 25 years researching my family history, looking into the lives of those who came before me.  I have my useless history degree (lol) and a passionate interest in anything before about 1930 (arbitrary date) but generally don’t think about myself much.  This time of the year, most people are busy making resolutions and looking forward and I while I don’t do much of the former I excel at the latter.  This time I think I will explore a bit of my earliest memory, at least as I think about it. I was born in 1954 in a post-war Britain that was looking forward. With a glamorous young Queen on the throne, I like to believe that my parents thought of themselves as a glamorous young couple ready to embrace this bold new world.  My dad was a aerospace engineer with DeHaviland’s and after his death I had a quick look through some of his papers which pointed to a young man dreaming of space and rockets and other worlds.  My mother alway...